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Shame on you, President Carter. Shame on you, Bill Maher. Shame on you, Maureen Dowd. Shame on all of you committed leftists who are screaming "Racist!!," "Racist!!"

You remind me of a time in my childhood, yes, here in the rural south, when my grandfather would not let me go to town one Saturday because "certain people" were marching, people wearing sheets. Good, decent people hid in their homes in fear of potential violence. What you are doing today is no different than what these lunatic Klansmen did. You are striking fear into the hearts of good, decent people, fear that, if they disagree with you or President Obama, you will point your boney fingers at them and scream "Racist!!" The violence is just as real though it is emotional rather than physical. No one, in this day and age, wants to be called a racist.

You and your ilk have cleverly figured this out, and you are using this new "sheet" to scare people into silence. You have been "using" minorities for decades. You do not really care about them. It is all about power. Minorities are just your "human shields" protecting you from having to engage in an open, honest, and logical debate.

It is ironic that an anti-Semite like you, Mr. Carter, is among the first to point your finger.

It is ironic that you, Mr. Maher, who has a pent up sea of hatred toward religious people and religion, is among the first to point your finger. Racism? I don’t think so.

There are two types of racism. There is the overt, in-your-face kind. It is hideous and ugly. There is another kind, a paternalistic racism, which assumes that minorities are incompetent and must be saved from a corrupt and unjust society by a loving benefactor. This kind of racism is also ugly, and the stink of it wafting off of you officious, condescending leftists is cloying.

When I lived in Washington and the Boston area I attended a lot of cocktail parties with wealthy paternalistic "progressives." At these parties they would cry crocodile tears, moan about the plight of the hapless poor, mouth a few Worker’s Party slogans, then climb in their luxury cars and drive back to Georgetown or Exeter.

You, and they, remind me of sixteenth century British aristocrats who kept a scented handkerchief stuck up their sleeves which they could hold next to their noses, lest they be offended by the smell of actual common people.

The programs you have championed to spread your largess, at other people’s expense, I might add, have failed. Welfare has failed. Your education reforms have failed. Most of the money is gobbled up by an administrative apparatchik. The programs have produced the opposite of what you supposedly intended. They have not helped lift people into self sufficiency. They have driven most of the poor deeper into dependence. The most notable achievement, perhaps failure would be a better description, of the welfare system and the programs of "The Great Society" which have cost billions and billions of dollars, is the destruction of the family among the poor, both black and white. This unintended consequence resulted from financially favoring broken families over intact families.

The good news is that many poor people, black and white did not let injustice and unfairness get in their way. They persevered, got educated, started businesses, became doctors, lawyers, educators, plumbers, masons, administrators and civil servants and built a life for themselves and their families. They did not limp around complaining-waiting for someone to take care of them. Herman Cain, with whose ideas I tend to agree, and your Mr. Obama, with whose ideas I tend to disagree, are notable examples. People like these and countless others, who value achievement and excellence, should have their accomplishment and work ethic heralded as models for our children.

Although racism does exist in this country as well as every other country on this planet, it is becoming less prevalent here with each generation. Perhaps when my grandchildren or their children are grown, both kinds of racism will have declined to the point that the only people who will take note of it are historians.

If Mr. Obama’s plans fail, you and your friends can limp around and whine about unfairness and injustice and the corrupt nature of a capitalist society. If you win, you can stick your thumbs under your armpits and crow. The rest of us, the great mass of commoners, will just get up and go to work on your plantation.